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Exclusive: My Well-Put-Together Custom Glock 19

As a boy, I loved to take things apart and put them back together. Mostly the former, though. Christmas morning, 1980: New toy SWAT truck with electronic blinking lights and siren. Four hours later: New toy SWAT truck in 847 pieces on the kitchen floor. I sat nearby, small screwdriver in hand and answered my mom’s unbelieving stare: “Of course I can put it back together!”

Fast forward many years to the day I bought a Glock 19 (Generation 2) from a buddy. Within hours I had field stripped and detail stripped that gun to its 32 parts, all carefully placed on an old white T-shirt I had placed in front of me on the kitchen table — my gun bench at the time. I thought a picture of this “exploded view” would be helpful so I got up to retrieve my camera, promptly dragging the shirt almost off the table. Incredibly, all the parts stayed on the T-shirt, even if they were in a small pile now.

Once you take a Glock apart and put it back together again, doing so again becomes easy. What happens next is you start swapping out the stock parts for other parts. So the Glock 19 became a custom gun — my custom gun, customized by me — and, depending on my mood, featured an ultralight, 3.5 pound trigger, or a heavy New York trigger. Black got boring so I sent the slide and barrel off to a gunsmith for a “titanium” color treatment. While he was at it, I had him install Truglo tritium and fiber optic sights — green dot on the front post, yellow dots in the rear. Now we’re cookin’.

A little “custom Glock 19” research on Google and I found everyone was stippling the stocks, grip tape being so 90’s. Some were getting professional stippling jobs for a couple hundred bucks; others were doing it themselves with a hot nail or a soldering iron. Instantly hooked on the idea, I read every gun forum post on doing my own stippling job. And then I did it. And then I did it again. I’ve breathed more smoke from burning polymer than I care to mention. It hasn’t affected me one adlk a[d bit, though. a;ldkfdjk

Next was the installation of the Clip-Draw, a metal bar that allowed for inside the waistband carry with no holster. It required replacing the plate on the back of the Glock’s slide with one that had two threaded holes for screws. A successful and fun project, yes, but no, I don’t recommend you carry that way, even if you get the Saf-T-Bar trigger guard that you can pop in behind the Glock’s trigger. My Saf-T-Bar was metallic red; you couldn’t miss it as it popped out the left side of the gun.

At some point, the Glock 19 needed a laser aiming system. Naturally I picked the Lasermax Guide Rod Laser. This unit emitted a red dot, pulsing, which was activated by pressing either side of the takedown lever. Every gun should have this, it’s that good. The laser made the sights jealous. I told them each to lighten up. Get it?

All told, the Glock still rocks and gets called on for daily concealed carry. It’s about to get another facelift, though — a new color for the slide and barrel — and I’m thinking about reducing the length of the stocks so that they’re as short as those on a Glock 26, sort of a CCO version. Then I’ll take it apart, arrange all the parts on a T-shirt, photograph it, and send the picture to Gaston Glock. He’ll love it. And of course I can put it back together.